Yale dishwasher gets his job back

1:00 PMWhen it comes to the concept of town and gown relations, New Haven, Connecticut, is one of the most stratified cities in the United States. Surrounding one of the most prestigious universities in the country is a population and region whose demographic trajectory followed that of many others: After the second World War, black folks flocked to the coastal town for jobs. Then, white people decided to leave.

The last time I was there — to speak to a group of college journalists — the only black folks I saw were cab drivers and school employees. That included everyone on the panel I was participating on and the students in the program. The tension between the school and the city is still apparent and unavoidable.

In the 1960s and ’70s, it was a full-blown political hotbed. In the ’50s, conservative demigod William Buckley lived there. Then came local “urban renewal” — more popularly known as negro removal, in some parts of the world. The fallout from the New Haven Black Panther Party trials served as a window into how race relations were developing on a local and national scale. It also led to Yale’s decision to become a closed campus. By the ’90s, outsiders considered the city a straight-up violent place once you stepped off school grounds.

So, when Corey Menafee, a 38-year-old dishwasher at Yale University decided he was going to destroy some stained-glass windows that depicted slaves carrying cotton on his way home from work, he wasn’t just some randomly fed up dude that popped off. He grew up in New Haven. He’s got a degree from Virginia Union University and is supporting two kids.

“It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that,” Menafee told The New Haven Independent. “I just said, ‘That thing’s coming down today. I’m tired of it.’ ” It’s worth noting that the word “racist” is in quotes for the headline of this story.

The easiest way to understand just how deep the institutional connection to discrimination is at Yale, all you need to know is that these images were featured at the residence hall of Calhoun College, named after John C. Calhoun, the seventh U.S. vice president who believed strongly in slavery.

“The Ivy League in particular is a bastion of Americana and its often troubling idols,” Doreen St. Felix wrote at MTV.com. “It’s a powerful aesthetic, providing an apolitical zone for the patriotic to profess their love of country. And it seems harmless, a quirk of history filtered primarily through art. But Confederate memory can be found throughout Americana, whether the symbol is a flag or the windows in an Ivy League residential college.”

Separately, Yale’s black student body population has been charging the proverbial establishment gate in the past year or so over a range of issues. Here arethree storiesfrom The New Journal, a student-run publication that can catch you up on that.

Perhaps most shocking is that it worked. The university announced Tuesday that it is prepared to reinstate Menafee to his position. “We are willing to take these unusual steps given the unique circumstances of this matter, and it is now up to Mr. Menafee whether he wishes to return to Yale,” Karen Peart, director of external communications, said in a statement. Menafee agreed to return.

“There is a bit of regret, because, as a grown adult with a sound mind and able to think, you know, you don’t never want to resort to those type of tactics, as far as bringing change about,” Menafee told the radio program Democracy Now! last week. “You want to sit down, and you want to talk to people, and you want to — you want to use your intellectual skills. You’re not — you don’t want to physically just destroy something. I don’t encourage anybody to just go ahead and destroy another person’s or another entity’s property because you don’t like it. There’s better ways to resolve it. However, the action that I did, obviously, there is a plethora of people who believe the same thing, who felt the same thing. So, in that way, I think my actions were justified, because other people — a lot of other people feel the same way I feel.”

Lux et veritas is the school’s motto, which translates loosely to: truth through enlightenment. “None of this would have been possible without the efforts of the community and the media. I can’t say it enough: Thank you so much,” Menafee said Tuesday.

Sometimes, speaking up makes a difference.

All Day PodcastClinton Yates (left), Jill Hudson and Justin Tinsley host the All Day Podcast from The Undefeated.Photo by Nick Caito / ESPN Images

Domonique, a former NFL cornerback who will be writing weekly recaps of this season’s Ballers, attempted to answer the question that was likely on everyone’s mind while watching episode one of season two: Is this really what life as an NFL player is like? Especially the off-the-field beef between players.

The crew then discussed the recently released Team USA basketball photo, in which players who aren’t endorsed by Team USA sponsor Nike have their shoes blocked out or covered. You won’t guess which company’s shoes Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson rocks with.

Finally, Clinton wraps things up by leading a discussion on Kim Kardashian’s video that exposed T-Swift, who’s had a storied feud with Kim’s husband, Kanye. Spoiler: Clinton loves himself some Kim K.

Give it a listen, and if you have any feedback or show ideas, feel free to email us at allday@theundefeated.com.

Social MediaHOLLYWOOD, CA – JULY 09: Actress/comedian Leslie Jones arrives at the premiere of Sony Pictures’ “Ghostbusters” at TCL Chinese Theatre on July 9, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

Leslie Jones’ week is off to a bad start

2:26 PMWhat’s it like to be a black woman in Hollywood? Look no further than Leslie Jones, one of the stars of Ghostbusters, directed by Paul Feig, which was released last weekend. The comedian/actress who recently came to more fame as a player on NBC’s Saturday Night Live has been getting constantly harassed on Twitter since the movie came out, and the social networking site has done little about it.

Compare that to what happened on singer Taylor Swift’s Instagram account, where her public row with Kim Kardashian, the wife of rapper Kanye West, is playing out in these internet streets. Without getting into the long details of the feud, when Swift was getting a lot of heat in the form of snake emojis all over her comments, the app began to delete them, according to reports.

Many celebrities have come together in support of Jones under the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ. But the 48-year-old wasted no time in shining a light on her harassers and being open about her feelings on the matter.

Calling people apes and monkeys is the oldest form of lazy racism in the book, but this is another ugly turn in what’s been a difficult marketing schedule for Jones. She couldn’t even find a designer to work with her for a dress for the premiere of her own movie. “It’s so funny how there are no designers wanting to help me with a premiere dress for movie,” she tweeted last month. “Hmmm that will change and I remember everything.”

As for this latest episode, whether or not she returns to Twitter is still in question. She said that she was leaving the platform on Monday night.

Expect her to come back even stronger on the next season of SNL.

Daily DoseCLEVELAND, OH – JULY 18: Melania Trump, wife of Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, delivers a speech on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicks off on July 18. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned, did it? The first day of the Republican National Convention was eventful right up until its end, when even afterward the bottom fell out of the bag. First, there was a bunch of nonsense about “White Elevators.” Then, a delegate revolt on the floor. Following that, U.S. Rep. Steve King called all people of color “subgroups” on cable news, implying white people had done the most for human civilization. Not to be outdone, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani blew a gasket. Finally, Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech to close the night. Hello, Tuesday.

Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift officially have beef. Two of the most popular people on earth are now at odds, because Kardashian made the decision to leak a recording of her husband, Kanye West, talking to the latter about his song “Famous.” In it, he uses insulting language about Swift, which she claimed she didn’t know about. Tay Tay took to Instagram to tell her side of the story, and threw out the phrase “character assassination,” making it clear that this won’t end anytime soon. ABC News has the details.

When you hear the phrase Blue Lives Matter, it’s thought of as an opposition to Black Lives Matter. That either/or binary isn’t necessarily a reasonable way to frame the discussion, but it is what it is. Case in point: a black officer getting shot and killed because a fellow law enforcement official assumed he was a criminal. That aside, between Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, there has been a lot of discussion about the targeting of cops. It is, in fact, a growing problem. FiveThirtyEight’s Carl Bialik explains that this could be the deadliest year for terror attacks against police since 1973.

Draymond Green is trying to turn around his summer. After his Golden State Warriors lost in the NBA Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and in the opinion of many his actions led to his team’s demise, he found himself in the headlines again. This time for getting into an altercation outside an East Lansing, Michigan, bar. He’s now trying to put all that behind him at the Olympics. His presence does make for an interesting subplot with Team USA. ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss reports.

Free Food

Coffee Break: The word “blogger” is often associated with living in one’s parents’ basement. It is NOT typically associated with being an NBA player. Alas, Jeff Teague, who now plays for his hometown Indiana Pacers, is going to be doing just that next season. This is a reality show I’d watch.

Black Lives MatterBALTIMORE, MD – APRIL 22: Ten-year-old Robert Dunn uses a megaphone to address hundreds of demonstrators during a protest against police brutality and the death of Freddie Gray outside the Baltimore Police Western District station April 22, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. Gray, 25, was arrested for possessing a switch blade knife April 12 outside the Gilmor Homes housing project on Baltimore’s west side. According to his attorney, Gray died a week later in the hospital from a severe spinal cord injury he received while in police custody. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Fourth officer acquitted

4:33 PMLet’s ask ourselves a question: If no one in Baltimore Police Department is responsible for Freddie Gray’s death, who is? Did a man just snap his own neck in the back of a police vehicle by himself? According to the state, apparently so.

Today, a fourth officer was acquitted in the case of the man who died last year after sustaining injuries while he was detained. Lt. Brian Rice, 42, was the highest-ranking officer in the incident. It’s worth noting that he asked for a decision to be made by a Baltimore Circuit Court judge, not a jury. Once again, this is how the system works for itself. Officers Garrett Miller and Alicia White are still awaiting trial.

The judge in the Gray case said an error in judgment was not enough to convict Rice of misconduct or negligence.

Most importantly, though, is this notion of erasure through separation. There are so many layers of plausible deniability between the enforcement of law and the termination of a black life that you don’t need a master’s degree to understand why people think they don’t matter. Even when police officers kill a fellow law enforcement official, they don’t go to jail.

The officer who shot and killed undercover detective Jacai Colson in Prince George’s County, Maryland, said he didn’t know that he was not a suspect because he was not in uniform. More plainly, he assumed that because he was shooting a gun and he was black that he was a criminal. And a grand jury agreed with him. Blue Lives Matter? Apparently not, if they’re black, too. Mind you, Colson was actually protecting a police station from an ambush. Hey, at least someone named a dog after him.

https://twitter.com/TaliAuzenne/status/753975073241833472

What’s also incredibly quizzical is that the city agreed to pay $6.4 million to Gray’s family over the matter, a tad more than the $6 million that the city of Cleveland paid to the family of Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by police in 2014. At the time, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “the purpose of the civil settlement is to bring an important measure of closure to the Gray family, to the community and to the city. And to avoid years and years of protracted civil litigation.”

crazy how freddie gray's death was ruled a homicide but court says no one killed him

Daily DoseCLEVELAND, OH – JULY 18: Cleveland police officers detain a protester in Cleveland Public Square near the site of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. Protestors are staging demonstrations outside of the Republican National Convention which starts on Monday July 18 and runs through July 21. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

It’s the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. It feels like a big moment already and it’s just the first day. The Ohio city, which isn’t even the capital, is abuzz with people though there’s also a tad of awkwardness because some people don’t want to find themselves affiliated with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Sidebar: If you’re wondering, his whole family will be speaking there at some point this week, as will Scott Baio. Yes, that Scott Baio. All that aside, many are nervous about the event in general. Here are five things to watch from the Quicken Loans Arena this week.

Another day, another terrifying shooting situation involving police. This time, again in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where three officers were killed while responding to a 911 call. Still, no one knows why this person chose to do this, but we again find ourselves trying to heal as result of the actions of someone with a firearm. The truth is that this is all madness. Everyone is afraid of everyone and every other person seems to have fun to assuage said fears. ABC News’ Emily Shapiro has the details on how the whole scene went down in Louisiana.

I have to admit. I have no idea how to process the concept of space. Like, I get it — there are other planets, a solar system, etc. Your boy isn’t on some pseudo-science foolishness. But when I’m told that organizations such as NASA are sending things into other planets’ orbits, my mind is blown. Alas, that’s what it did, and now a spacecraft called Juno is sending pictures back from Jupiter. How does that work? Don’t ask me. But you can ask FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth-Baker, who explains the entire process.

The sexual assault scandal that rocked Baylor’s campus is finally getting official consideration. The school plans to present tomorrow to the Big 12 conference how it plans to handle the issues. On one level, it’s a tad awkward that this needs to go as far as the conference level to get properly addressed, but whatever. It’s something. If you don’t recall, basically Baylor’s football team was doing everything it could to conceal sexual assaults alleged against its players. ESPN’s Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach report.

Free Food

Coffee Break: If you haven’t seen this video of a man being wrongfully arrested by an officer who believes that he’s done everything right and even lies to convince himself that he did, you need to watch it. It’s a perfect example of how hubris from an authority figure can basically ruin someone’s life in an instant.

Snack Time: Speaking of, police officers don’t go to jail even when they kill one of their own. Which is mind-boggling when you really think about it.

What you might not know about street art and graffiti is that, for many people, it’s a matter of love. Love of art, love of paint, in fewer cases, love of vandalism and, in many cases, it’s love of human. Utah & Ether are two graffiti artists who have taken their operation completely global after meeting in the United States. They, as a couple and teammates, travel the globe documenting their often extremely risky painting endeavors.

Check out this story from The New Yorker (I know) about their history, titled “To Catch a Graffiti Artist,” which also does a solid job of outlining what exactly the graffiti world is about these days, and all its different iterations. While you’re at it, make sure you check in on their video series Probation Vacation, which, if you’re like me sounds like a dream come true.

Traveling the world with someone you love painting and documenting it? Sign me up.

The nation of ‘Skateistan’

1:15 PM“Skateboarding has taught me to believe in myself and to overcome challenges that at first seemed impossible.”

Those are the words of a kid in the latest commercial from “Skateistan,” a nonprofit organization that works with kids in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa to empower children through the world of skateboarding. Why do we highlight activism operations around here so much? Because they’re on the ground floor of a movement to globalize the sport and ultimately help people of color achieve.

What you’re going to see in this video isn’t high-flying pros deftly handling rails and ramps all over some exotic city. You’ll see young kids, including girls, thankfully, trying and achieving the most basic of tricks. As a young person, nailing one of those can be a rather inspirational building block when it comes to learning the value of perseverance. Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk lends his face to this effort, as well, in case you were wondering if it’s legit.

Overall, skating is fun. But it’s also an industry and a business that, when powers are used for good, can ultimately create a world where kids feel they accomplish more than what their typical lot in life may have initially shown them.

Daily DosePallbearers lead a march down Selby Avenue after the funeral of Philando Castile at the Cathedral of St. Paul on July 14, 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Castile was shot and killed on July 6, 2016 by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Daily Dose: 7/15/16

2:40 PMAll right, we’ve come to the end of a relatively whirlwind week in the ESPN world, and on Thursday I sat down with Israel Gutierrez and Amin Elhassan to talk about President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C. Tune in.

France is again in peril. On the day the country celebrated Bastille Day, someone decided to turn things dark. Extremely so. A guy took a truck and plowed through people reveling on the street in Nice, creating a grisly scene in which more than 80 people ended up dead. For a nation of its size, France has ended quite a few terrorist attacks in the past few months, and the UEFA Euro Championships had its fair amount of ups and downs as well this summer. It took a shootout with police to kill this particular assailant, who was ready to do more damage, ABC News reports.

Funerals are always difficult to watch. Yet, Philando Castile demise is something that because of the incredible bravery of Diamond Reynolds, we had the brutal opportunity to watch play out live on our mobile devices if we so chose. On Thursday, he was laid to rest in St. Paul, Minnesota. I will admit, these pictures and stories of black pain become very difficult to look at after a certain amount of time, but they are necessary because it reminds us of what life is and what it isn’t. ABC News’ Emily Shapiro reports.

The 30 for 30 Doc & Darryl is borderline depressing. Not because the movie is poorly done, but because the story is so utterly regrettable that revisiting it makes you want to scream and cry at the same time. Two of the best players in Major League Baseball were once on the same team that won a World Series but were both two young to even handle it. Dwight “Doc” Gooden and Darryl Strawberry threw their careers away to carousing, and both came out on the other side to talk about it. FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine breaks down that team, analytically.

Von Miller is about to be VERY paid. The man who tore his way through offensive lines all the way to a Super Bowl title with the Denver Broncos last season and never looked back has been locked in a negotiation battle with his team over his contract. And it appears, he might actually get the better of them. I love these stories of teams where a guy “just doesn’t do that” when it comes to paying certain types of players. Turns out your boy will end up getting $70 million guaranteed, according to Adam Schefter and Jeff Legwold. Wow.

Free Food

Coffee Break: We talk about police brutality a lot in these parts, mainly because it’s something close to us. But how we document and process it is a personal choice for each to make. You should check out this artist who’s recreating “popular” scenes of said instances, and putting them on canvases that look like folders. Very dope.

Snack Time: If you want to see a video of George W. Bush awkwardly getting way too enthusiastic at a memorial for those no longer with us, you can click here. I have no idea what to make of this other than that it’s weird.